


it takes a village

by espressohno



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Shore Leave, bowling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23277013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/espressohno/pseuds/espressohno
Summary: FEEL GOOD PROMPT COLLECTION - REQUESTS OPENanother haphazard gift for my readers because this year is hard (although this year being hard also means updates are a little irregular). send me a prompt in the comments or on tumblr and i will do my best!
Relationships: Christine Chapel/Nyota Uhura, James T. Kirk & Christopher Pike, James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock, Philip Boyce/Christopher Pike
Comments: 103
Kudos: 92





	1. christine/nyota: coffeeshop au

**Author's Note:**

> hey everybody  
> we're in the middle of a really hard time and it's been hard to write, or do anything except stare at the wall, really. i've struggled with not being able to finish any of my WIPs even though i've had all this time at home. after some encouragement from a dear friend of mine i decided i'd start writing some little prompts as often as i can. i hope they help.  
> talk about whatever you want in the comments, or message me on tumblr--we all need some connection right now
> 
> AND, i wanted to do something different this time. i'm getting my prompts from veronicabunchwrites. she's got all of her prompts collected [here](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/538124) on pillowfort while her tumblr is down. if there's any prompt or pairing you want to see (star trek only) let me know in the comments. it'll help me keep writing and (ideally) it'll help you feel better. does not have to be current events related!

**Prompt (loosely interpreted):** “you run the night club beside my bakery so 3/4am is the only time we see each other”

Christine came home to a pretty suspicious-looking paper bag sitting squarely on her welcome mat--although she probably would have found any and every object suspicious after getting off of a 36-hour shift which had turned into a 48-hour shift. 

It was the fifth time in the past three weeks that she’d gotten off hours later than she was scheduled, and she’d come to realize that it made her incredibly jumpy. Too jumpy to move through her usual routine of getting breakfast at 5am, calling her mom on the phone during the trip home, cleaning the apartment, and then settling into the couch with the curtains drawn to nap until dinner time. 

Now she rushed home after every shift, paced a little bit, and then watched TV to drown everything out until she passed out sitting up against the couch cushions. 

That last part was starting to cause enough neck tension to handicap the average person. But Christine was a nurse. She could ignore it for as long as people still needed her--patients at the hospital, her mom calling from three states away, her neighbor two doors down who needed help with her groceries. This would all be over eventually, and she’d go out and get herself a massage. Unless something more important came up (something usually did).

Christine reached back and palmed at the side of her neck while she looked down at the brown paper bag, folded once at the top and sealed with a sticker. 

Wait, she knew that sticker. 

She squatted down on legs that somehow still supported her weight after two days running circles through the hospital and read:  _ The Nebula Bakery & Cafe _ . 

It was where she always went for breakfast when she got off at 5 am instead of 5 pm. 

She was about to panic about the fact that they knew where she lived until she remembered she’d had a birthday cake delivered a few months ago. 

Christine picked up the bag and went inside to open it, deciding that there was nothing inside she needed to be suspicious about. She toed her shoes off with more effort than it ever used to take and fell back against the couch in her scrubs. 

As soon as the bag was open she could smell the contents of her usual breakfast. Egg white and spinach croissant sandwich, walnut banana bread, both neatly wrapped in plastic wrap but still fresh enough to fill her nose with the familiar, safe memories of early mornings at the Nebula. 

All of a sudden she felt almost homesick for the peacefulness of the bakery at 5 am. She always sat in the armchair next to the fireplace, whether it was lit or not, and she’d eat her breakfast in silence while all the patients and the pain from the last 36 hours at the hospital started to drain out of her. The staff always seemed to sense when she brightened up, and then she’d have company. Pavel, the college student who’d come all the way from Russia, pretending to clean the surrounding tables and chairs again and again while asking her about her job--the good parts. Or Janice bringing her the morning paper, once she’d finished reading it from behind the register. Or, sometimes, the owner herself coming to sit in the opposite armchair with a stack of papers and a cappuccino, and then ignoring the papers and talking to Christine while she drank her coffee. 

Those mornings she really missed. It was hard to keep friends with a nurse’s schedule, and usually Christine held up just fine on a routine of phone calls and the occasional last-minute dinner plans, but sitting with someone, even if all they did was drink coffee and watch the fireplace, had been more important to her sanity than she’d realized. 

Her breakfast was always accompanied by a chai tea with milk and no sugar, which was (understandably) omitted from being placed into a paper bag. Except when she pulled out the croissant and the banana bread there was a tea bag underneath it, sitting on top of an envelope which was on top of that morning’s newspaper. 

Christine might have been tearing up at that point, she was so strung out, but she ignored it in favor of opening the envelope. 

_ Christine-- _

_ We decided to do something for you, even though it doesn’t measure up to all of the work you’re doing for the whole city right now.  _

_ Steep the tea for six minutes. Hopefully you have milk in the fridge--I didn’t want to risk leaving some on your doorstep. If the pastries are cold you can warm them in the oven for a few minutes at 100 degrees, or in the microwave. I won’t judge.  _

_ Please take care of yourself, too. We can’t wait to have you back in the blue armchair once you’re done saving the world. Mornings aren’t the same without you.  _

_ From Nyota (and Pavel and Janice) _

All of a sudden Christine’s mind was replaying all those memories of Nyota across from her in the other blue chair. Complaining about the bakery’s finances, telling funny stories from the week before, asking Christine about her job and her coworkers and her family. Because even with the stress of running a business and the hundreds of customers she saw every day, she always seemed to remember everything Christine told her. On mornings when the fireplace was lit she would lean to the side, sometimes, and close her eyes and soak in the warmth like the way cats lay on the carpet and soak up the sun that streaks through the windows, and she’d smile just a little. Not a customer service smile, but something more genuine, as the line of one cheekbone and the curve of her forehead and the side of her nose was cast in golden light from the fireplace. Christine remembered her sitting still and beautiful like a painting, but that only ever lasted a few seconds before she’d open her eyes again and look at her like they knew each other better than just a business owner and a regular customer. 

All of those mornings felt wasted, now, like she hadn’t savored them enough. The Nebula had been such a regular part of her routine that she’d never felt compelled to savor the mornings she spent there, and now she wished she had a better memory. Of Pavel’s accent, and the dry jokes Janice would sometimes make under her breath when she walked by, which always made Christine snort even though she couldn’t remember a single one, now. Of Nyota, and her long hair pulled back and the quiet way she laughed and the mornings they spent absorbed in conversation or not speaking at all. 

She’d take either one, right now, sitting on her couch with all of the lights still off and the last of the afternoon sun through the blinds. Nyota probably wouldn’t care about her unwashed hair and sweat-stained scrubs and the dark circles under her eyes. 

Christine looked down at the letter for a moment, reading it again, and then at the pastries on her coffee table. 

She knew exactly what she was going to do once this was all over. 


	2. mcspirk: space bowling!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> huge thanks to @sobre_again for today's prompt, and for making incredible art and also being supportive all the time. i hope i was able to make all of your space bowling dreams come true

**Prompt from @sobre_again** : “the crew want to teach Spock to play space-bowling during a shore leave. Their personal techniques are all a little weird but quite efficient. Also Bones and Scotty are persuaded that Romulan Ale can help to throw better and want to test it. Jim obviously has a crush but he is the only one who thinks that it’s a well hidden secret.”

“No, Spock, try it like this,” Nyota said gently. 

It was hard enough to get Spock to agree to join them when they found out about an old-fashioned bowling alley on Vega, but when it turned out that Spock also  _ sucked at bowling _ \--like  _ really _ sucked--

The last half hour had consisted of Spock glancing at the nearest exit every few seconds and the rest of the crew taking turns distracting him from making his escape. Nyota was currently trying her best to teach him how to bowl while also keeping his ego intact. 

As it turned out, her best was not very good.

Jim, meanwhile, had been spending the last half hour standing in his bowling shoes and glancing at  _ Spock  _ every few seconds. Just, because, well, he was just looking out for him, was all. 

Nyota slid her hot pink bowling ball into the lane with so much delicacy that Jim was surprised it actually made it all the way to the end and earned her a split. Spock wasn’t able to replicate that, obviously, and his orange-and-yellow ball crept down the lane slowly before falling in the gutter. Jim could see the way it made his already tense posture even more tense. 

Before Jim came up with an idea to break the tension, a certain Chief Engineer who had camped out at the bar as soon as they walked in finally bounded down to join them. 

“No, Spock.” He picked up a green bowling ball which was clearly too heavy and hobbled over to the lane next to Spock and Nyota, yelled “Like  _ THIS! _ ” and thrust the ball towards the pins with absolutely no technique and no regard for the infrastructure of the bowling alley.

It was honestly a miracle that Scotty didn’t break a hole through the floor. His ball managed to knock over one single pin on the edge before finishing in the gutter as well. 

Scotty beamed at Spock with his hands on his hips, and Jim had never seen a better illustration of the dynamic between his senior officers. Nyota rolled her eyes and shook her head and smiled once she’d turned around to retrieve her ball. Spock’s eyes were wide, like he could not, for the life of him, figure out if any of his coworkers were trustworthy when it came to learning how to bowl. He finally looked over at Jim for confirmation, where he stood leaning against the rack of bowling balls, and the expression on his face of  _ please can I go home _ was quickly climbing up the list of the Cutest Things Spock Has Done All Year (Volume 5). 

Jim opened his mouth to offer some support to his first officer but he was interrupted. By Pavel, who was supposedly sober but running on a lethal dose of encouragement from watching Scotty act like a fool. 

“Spock! Spock! You do it like this.”

Laughter erupted from Scotty and Hikaru while Pavel straddled the opening of the lane, biting his lip to keep focused, and swung the ball back and forth between his legs a few times before launching it forward. The ball flew through the air and landed with a  _ thud _ loud enough to warrant them getting kicked out, and then everyone watched in anticipation as it rolled, painfully slow, losing momentum every second, into the gutter. No pins. The laughter only grew and Pavel finally doubled over, wheezing. 

“ _ That _ ...is how you bowl,” he choked out. Scotty slapped him on the back a couple times. 

Either his crew was more in tune to Spock’s emotions than he thought, or it was an incredible coincidence, but everyone failing at bowling somehow made Spock start to relax. The tension in his shoulders softened, he stopped looking at the door, and the next time they glanced over at each other Jim could see that little glint in his deep, brown eyes--he was having a good time. 

Hikaru made a very over-exaggerated attempt at copying Nyota’s technique, which ended with him falling on his ass, and somehow getting a washout. Nyota was giggling behind her hand and then all eyes were on her, and with an attitude that Jim very rarely got to see (if ever), she picked up her pink bowling ball and promptly sent it straight into the gutter. 

Pavel and Scotty cheered. 

Somehow, in the middle of all of the chaos, Jim could still feel Bones coming up behind him. He carried a sort of energy with him, that filled up Jim’s subconscious the same way Bones filled up doorways with his shoulders and his height and sometimes a hypospray in his hand. Jim turned his head a second before Bones’ shoulder came to brush his own. 

“What’s with the spectating?” Bones asked, “You’d fit right in to this crowd with  _ your _ skill level.”

“Very funny.” Jim looked at his relaxed posture and the playfulness in his eyes and immediately knew how much Romulan Ale he must have just drank with Scotty. It tugged at the same sense of fondness that Spock’s bewildered expression had ten minutes ago. Jim cleared his throat. 

“I should ask you the same question, you know. Mr. Starfleet Bowling Champion of 2257.”

Bones slapped his hand over Jim’s mouth.

“Hey, announce that to the whole star system, why don’t you.”

Jim narrowed his eyes at Bones, who did not move his hand. 

“I came here with a plan,” he said quietly. 

Jim glanced to the side and suddenly felt twice as trapped, because Spock, surrounded by fools, was staring at the two of them instead. 

He didn’t have that confused look on his face like before, it was something more... _ well _ ...hm. Jim had no idea what that face meant. 

His bowling shoes were too tight, maybe. That had to be it. 

Jim flicked his eyes from Spock to Bones and Bones was  _ smiling _ . At Spock. Bones was more drunk than he’d thought.

It was possible that they’d never gone to a bowling alley at all, they’d actually gone with Scotty’s suggestion, and Jim was currently hallucinating in an Orion smoke room. It had happened before. Except Bones’ hand on Jim’s mouth was too real, and Jim could remember the sensation even after he took his hand away, that playful, tipsy glint in his eye fully aimed at Spock. 

This wasn’t a hallucination, it was a dream. Jim’s years-long dream was coming true tonight--he’d just never considered that bowling could be the catalyst. 

He was about to watch Bones hit on Spock using his secret champion-level bowling skills. 

Bones pushed the last of his drink into Jim’s hands and said, 

“Watch this.”

Jim watched as Spock’s eyes trailed on Bones picking out the same hot pink bowling ball as Nyota, and pushing through the rest of the crew towards a lane, and then Spock glanced back at Jim, eyebrow raised, and Jim shrugged. He downed the rest of Bones’ Romulan Ale.

Honestly Jim didn’t even need to witness Bones’ bowling with his eyes, he’d seen this routine a thousand times by now--this fucker and his “uninterested in bowling” act, spending the evening at the bar only to swoop in at the eleventh hour and show everybody up. He could have timed it down to the sound of all ten pins falling over and the whole room’s shocked reactions. 

But he watched, like always, as Bones glided across the floor like he was doing some sort of choreographed dance, the ball slipping out of his fingers easily only to pick up speed as it rolled down the lane. The way he stood there, arm reaching, legs crossed, leaning forward, frozen in time as he watched his handiwork. A perfect strike. 

“Okay,  _ what _ the fuck,” Pavel said. 

“Have you been holding out on us?” Scotty asked. 

Bones shrugged off everyone’s praise like he’d just picked up a bowling ball for the first time 45 seconds ago, because that was also part of his routine. Meanwhile Spock’s eyes as he stared at him were even wider, his mouth just slightly parted. Spock never looked at  _ Jim _ like that, damn it. 

Except Bones straightened up, walked over to Spock and said something close to his ear, his self-satisfied expression fading a little bit into something more genuine. Spock turned around a few seconds later, and then he was looking at Jim like that, too.

Jim’s knees went weak as both of them closed on him. Spock moved a little differently than usual in his bowling shoes, and Bones was tipsy, and they were both focused on Jim, and Jim was trapped again, for the second time. He started shaking his head. 

“No, absolutely not. I’m not bowling, not after that.”

“Come outside with us,” Bones whispered. 

Jim blinked a couple times, trying to figure out what that meant. He looked to Spock, who tilted his head just a little bit, the corner of his mouth turning up. 

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.” 

-

“Wait a minute.” Jim came up for air, trapped between Spock’s mouth on his own and Bones at his back, kissing the side of his neck. Spock’s lips were swollen and green, and his eyes had glazed over a little, and he instinctively chased after Jim’s mouth for just a fraction of a second and that  _ had _ to be the cutest thing Spock had done like...ever. 

“Wait a minute,” Jim said. He looked over his shoulder at Bones. “Didn’t we have sex after the first time you took me bowling?”

Bones looked like he had to think about it for a second, his eyebrows drawing together. Someone had messed up his hair, probably Spock when the two of them were kissing over Jim’s shoulder and Jim could hardly watch for fear of his entire reality exploding. 

“Oh yeah. I think we did.”

Jim scoffed. A hand was wrapping around his waist and he couldn’t even decipher whose it could be at this point. 

“Is that your  _ thing _ ?  _ Bowling _ ?”

“It would appear so,” Spock confirmed, sounding breathless, and Jim was going to have to kiss him again, as soon as possible. As soon as he was done making fun of Bones. 

“Oh my god, Bones, that is so lame.”

Bones glared at him. 

“Well yall both fell for it, so who’s lame now?”

Jim was halfway to coming up with a retort when another hand was underneath his chin--it was Spock’s--and Spock kissed him again, and Bones’ hands around his waist slipped underneath his shirt, and Jim decided that being lame was just fine with him. 


	3. chris pike being the galaxy's best dad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little hurt/comfort never hurt nobody!
> 
> all my love to aisha for this prompt which tugged at my heartstrings like never before

**Prompt from @aishahiwatari:** “May I please have some Chris Pike action? Something super comforting, like some h/c bathing type stuff ideally, with whoever you want? I would love that!”

Jim’s head was pounding. Exploding, more like, and it happened off-beat with his heart which was making him feel dizzy, too. 

“If you need to boot, I’ll pull over.”

“Mmmhh.”

“-just give me a heads-up, if you do. We just got the car detailed. Hey, Jim, stay awake.”

“I’m awake,” Jim mumbled. He pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window and closed his eyes. More dizzy. He opened them again and let his vision blur the streetlights as Chris drove them through the city, away from campus and away from that  _ fucking bar _ , thank  _ god _ . “I don’t have to throw up,” he said defensively. 

“That wasn’t an accusation. You’re allowed to throw up, just not inside the car.”

Jim pulled his lower lip into his mouth and worried the spot where it’d split open with his tongue. It still hurt, but he didn’t mind. It was a small, sharp, familiar pain. 

Everything he felt was familiar, actually, on its way to becoming a birthday tradition, getting absolutely shitfaced and then getting the shit beat  _ out _ of him. What was new was how ashamed he felt, in the passenger seat of Chris’ car. How ashamed he’d felt when he looked up from the ground in the alley beside the bar, confused by the sound of those third-year cadets running away, only to see the familiar outline of the man who’d brought him to the Academy in the first place. Who’d thought it was a good idea. Not even one year in and Jim had already proved him wrong, but he didn’t feel satisfied like he thought he would. 

He felt like shit. 

He didn’t even realize when the car stopped moving, when they’d left the high-rises of San Francisco and crossed the bridge into the suburbs. The feeling of Chris unbuckling his seatbelt and all but carrying him out of the car and up the driveway to the house woke him up enough to process things at half-speed. 

Jim had never been to his house before, he realized. The next thing he registered was throwing up in the bushes next to the front porch. 

He’d made it out of the car, at least. 

-

The tiles on the bathroom floor were still cold, even though it felt like Jim had been lying there for hours. He didn’t feel sick anymore, which was good, considering he’d be too weak to push himself up and in the direction of the toilet if he did. 

And he heard voices, from somewhere beyond the open door of the bathroom. Two of them. But he couldn’t hold onto the words, only the sounds of vowels and consonants and the pauses in between. He knew the conversation was about him, and he felt shame creeping up on him again. He didn’t know who Chris’ partner was. This would be the first time meeting them, and he was sick and drunk and beat-up on the bathroom floor. 

Jim figured he was about to throw up again, but his stomach was empty, and he was choking back tears instead. 

-

“I’m going to give you this.”

“I hate hypos.”

“It’ll help.” Jim’s body felt heavy and boneless as Chris helped him sit up from the floor. A hand stayed firm against his back while the other one lifted up the sleeve of his t-shirt. He’d gone to the bar wearing a jacket but god knows where that thing had ended up. Torn and abandoned in some alleyway right next to the dumpsters, and his dignity. 

“Ow.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“What are you, a doctor?” he slurred, “Why do you have hyposprays in your house? Do you take them for fun?”

Chris breathed out a laugh, bringing Jim to lean against the wall instead. More cold tiles. He stood up and turned the water on in the shower, holding his hand under the spray and adjusting the dial. Jim watched with tired eyes. 

“I’m married to a doctor,” Chris said casually, like the situation they’d ended up in was just part of a normal week. “And he still got this hypo ready for you even though you pissed him off with all that noise you made.”

“I was making noise?” Jim asked. 

Chris turned to look at him, curled up against the wall, and even if his doctor-husband was angry,  _ he _ wasn’t. At all. He smiled a little bit, ignoring Jim’s question to say,

“This shower’s for you, by the way. Get your clothes off.”

-

The hypo must have kicked in while Jim was sitting in the bathtub, warm water running down his back. Suddenly he could see more than fuzzy shapes, and he could feel more than the pounding of his head and the sting in his lip, and his mind was immediately flooded with nice, coherent thoughts about how much of a fuck-up he was. 

He pulled his knees up against his chest, staring down at his toes against white porcelain. His whole body was sore, he could feel it now that his headache was fading. His knuckles were cracked and bleeding. His cheekbone--right under his left eye--there was probably a bruise there. A bad one. 

Jim took a deep breath against another flood of tears. 

“Feeling better?” Chris asked, and he remembered that Chris was still there. He was the one holding the showerhead. He’d been washing Jim’s hair a minute ago, and now there was soap swirling down the drain in front of Jim’s feet. Jim crossed his arms over his knees, staring at his warped reflection in the shiny silver bathtub faucet. 

“Why do I do this?” he asked, voice barely louder than the sound of the water. “What’s wrong with me?”

Chris sighed, and shut the water off a moment later, sitting down next to the bathtub. He mirrored Jim, staring straight ahead at the wall instead of trying to make this an eye-contact conversation, and Jim was grateful for it. 

“I think you wanted to have a good time tonight,” he said. “And you wanted to have a good birthday for once. There’s nothing wrong with you for trying.”

Jim swallowed hard. 

“But you need to realize that getting drunk with strangers isn’t what helps you. You need to learn how to recognize when it’s time to just go home.”

“I don’t have a home.” Jim’s voice cracked. “I live in a fucking dorm.”

“I know.”

Neither of them talked, for a minute. There was only the sound of Jim’s shaky breathing and the last of the warm water dripping from the showerhead. Jim’s eyes got so blurry from tears that he couldn’t see his reflection in the faucet anymore, and then there was a towel being draped over his shoulders, another one fluffing his hair dry. 

“This is home, tonight, okay? And any night you need, from now on.”

Jim nodded, blinking. 

“I’m gonna get you some clothes.”

-

Jim woke up to sunlight streaming through the living room windows, covering the couch he slept on in light and warmth, and he forgot he was supposed to be miserable and hungover that morning. Instead he just felt tired, and sore, and a little bit sad. He wrapped himself in the blankets he’d kicked off in the middle of the night, and turned over, and went back to sleep. 

The next time he woke up it was because of sounds coming from the kitchen. The coffee pot, the gas stove, the refrigerator opening and closing, voices again, like last night. Jim could tell what they were saying this time, even as they spoke in low tones. 

_ How is he? _

_ Sleeping.  _

_ The hypospray helped, I hope.  _

_ Of course it did.  _

And then quieter--  _ I’m sorry we woke you up. _

_ I’m already over it.  _

Someone kissed someone else, maybe on the cheek. 

_ Are you staying for breakfast? _

_ I better not. _

_ Let that kid McCoy hold down the fort for an extra hour, you should eat.  _

_ It’s not that, it’s...he’s important to you. He deserves a better first impression than this. Next time.  _

The house was quiet for a moment, except for quiet sizzling on the stovetop. Synthetic bacon, Jim could smell it now. 

_ We’ll do dinner. You can invite one of your interns so he doesn’t feel outnumbered.  _

_ Deal.  _

Another kiss. Coffee poured into a cup, or maybe a thermos to go. 

_ Call me from the clinic? _

_ If I ever get a damn break in that place. _

Jim pulled the blanket over his eyes, curling further into the cushions, and waited for the sounds of Chris’ husband to leave--the doctor, on his way to the Starfleet clinic, apparently. He felt a strange sense of relief, like he’d been forgiven without needing to apologize. Given another chance to do better even though he didn’t deserve it. 

He felt a lump in his throat, but he forced himself up from the couch anyway, as soon as the coast was clear, and padded carefully into the kitchen on bare feet. 

Chris was dressed down in a t shirt and plaid pajama pants, his gray-and-brown hair unstyled, face unshaven, acting like this was just a normal Saturday morning, like he didn’t have an unwanted guest slinking around the house--and like he hadn’t picked up that guest at two in the morning. He actually smiled when he turned around, spatula in hand, and saw Jim in the doorway. 

“There you are, I was wondering if I was gonna have to wake you up. Coffee?”

Jim nodded, even though he felt like he didn’t deserve to say yes. He didn’t deserve any of this. He deserved to wake up in the alley beside the bar. 

Chris set the mug down on the kitchen island and he walked over and settled on one of the barstools. 

“Bacon, french toast, strawberries--replicated, I’m sorry to say--maple syrup?”

“You didn’t have to make me breakfast.”

“I wanted to. Do you want maple syrup or not?”

“Yes please.”

Jim stared down at the counter, guilt overwhelming him again. Guilt mixed with relief. Not even Chris was mad at him, for last night. But he should have been. Jim felt like someone was supposed to be angry with him, someone other than himself. Especially Chris, of all people. Instead, he was sliding a plate full of french toast and bacon over the spot of the counter Jim had been staring at. 

“Thanks,” Jim said quietly. 

Chris stood at the other side of his counter, his hands resting against the countertop. 

“Where’s your head at right now?”

“Not a good place.” Jim rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry. This is really nice. I can’t remember the last time someone made me a birthday breakfast.”

“This isn’t your birthday breakfast,” Chris said plainly.

Jim looked up from his french toast. 

“Today’s not your birthday.”

“Why the fancy breakfast, then,” Jim asked. 

Chris rolled his eyes a little bit. He turned away from the counter for a second to pour himself a cup of coffee. 

“You’ve tried celebrating your birthday, for 23 years, and every year it turns to shit,” he explained, pouring cream into his coffee, and Jim suppressed the urge to say  _ gee, thanks _ in response because, well, he had a point. “So we’re celebrating something else this year.” Chris beamed at Jim, spoon clinking against the sides of his coffee mug as he stirred in the cream. 

“Alright, I’ll bite, what are we celebrating.”

“That you lived through another birthday.”

Jim snorted.

“Hey, you laugh, but I’m serious. Your birthday is the hardest day of the year for you, and you made it through. So I’ve decided that this is the day we’re going to celebrate from now on. The day after the birthday.”

Jim couldn’t think of what to say to that. He cut a piece of french toast with the side of his fork, and wondered how he never realized that his birthday was the worst day of the year. It always had been, for every year since he could remember. Somehow he always ended up thinking he could make the next one different. Chris was right. 

“Jim,” Chris said, and he looked up again to see a slightly more serious expression on his face, not far from what he’d seen when he was lying on the bathroom floor, but easier to face, now, in the morning light. “I’m proud of you. Even after I watched you puke on my front porch.”

“I thought it was in the bushes.”

The corner of his mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile. 

“You know that, though, right? You’ve come really far, and I’m proud of who you are this morning. I don’t care what you did last night.”

Jim could manage a few more seconds of Chris’ earnest eye contact, in this house full of light which already felt more like home after one night than his dorm room did after a semester and a half. “I know,” he said quietly, and he looked down at his plate, and his eyes started to tear up again, and he ate his french toast. 


	4. mckirk: modern au post-surgery fluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i took some artistic license! (hope you don't mind sobre)  
> i just saw this prompt and i couldn't stop thinking about that video of the man hitting on his own wife while he's drugged up after surgery. so here is that, but mckirk ;)

**From @sobre_again (again!):** “A very drunk Jim shouting a very emotional declaration of love of best friendship to Bones, his best friend in the world who he can even date (or marry!) and they would still be best friends (spoiler alert: they are already together). And because friendship is very important and logical, the others insist on organizing a Best Friend Forever ceremony.”

Jim took longer than normal to wake up after surgery, which made Leonard start to worry as he sat there next to his hospital bed. He wished there was some way for him to have taken Jim’s appendix out himself. Not that he didn’t trust anyone else at the hospital, but it would have saved him a lot of stress--from the initial effort to even  _ get _ Jim to the hospital in the first place after he’d set his heart on  _ sleeping off a case of appendicitis _ , to now, while Leonard picked at the armrest of his chair nervously and waited for Jim to wake up. 

“You know this is absolutely a routine procedure, right,” Christine said from the doorway. At least she was on shift right now, to calm Leonard’s nerves with both her practical skill and her completely dry dismissal of his anxiety. “He’s fine.”

“Yeah, I know.” 

Leonard rubbed his eyes. 

He’d just gotten off a shift when he came home to find Jim collapsed on the bathroom floor from the pain in his appendix which had apparently started _ two days ago _ . He would have been jealous of Jim knocked out in a hospital bed if he weren’t equal parts anxious and furious. “I’ll know once he’s awake, damn it,” he muttered. 

“You’re being exactly the kind of person you always complain about right now.”

That made Leonard breathe out a laugh, propping his chin up on his hand. He glanced back at Christine out of the corner of his eye. They weren’t usually in this position, Christine on shift and Leonard in civvies next to someone’s bed. Actually, this was the first time it was happening, ever. 

“Isn’t there a nursing staff out there which needs bossing around?”

“Always.” She smiled, and before she left again she added, “And once your husband wakes up, he’s got visitors causing a public disturbance in the waiting room.”

“Tell them to go away and come back with dinner.”

-

The visitors in question, which turned out to be nearly everyone they knew, apparently got the message. Leonard had meant it as a joke, but made a mental note to thank Christine sometime in the future once he watched the lot of them file into Jim’s hospital room with takeout bags. 

Pavel and his accent and his puppy dog eyes made the rounds in the hallways and managed to borrow enough chairs for them to surround the bed, Nyota started passing out napkins and cutlery and calling out the contents of all the different containers, Scotty had a flask, Hikaru was taking pictures, and Gaila was posing, mostly inappropriately with the currently unconscious Jim. Bones just watched all of it, plate of Chinese untouched on his lap, and waited for Jim to open his eyes. 

He should have just done it. He could have found a way to get them to let him do it. He could have--

“Mmrmph.”

“Oh shit, he’s awake,” Gaila whispered. 

“Took him long enough,” Hikaru said, still looking down at his phone. 

Everyone was completely silent while they watched Jim stirring in bed, moving his head from one side to another, squeezing his eyes shut until that little wrinkle showed up between his eyebrows. Leonard could see his chest rising as his breaths got deeper, and then another half dozen expressions crossed over his features, and then he opened his eyes. 

A huge weight was lifted off of his shoulders, then, something easily twice or three times the size of the man right there in that hospital bed, the one he’d lifted off of the bathroom floor and forced into the passenger’s seat of the car last night no matter how he protested. Jim stared up at the plain white ceiling, blinked a few times, and then his eyes widened in recognition (and a little bit of fear, probably) and he flicked his gaze down from the ceiling. 

And then he saw all of his friends crowded around his bed, smiling like idiots, and his face softened again. 

The tone of his voice, weak and rough but undeniably happy, when he said  _ hey guys  _ made Leonard’s eyes threaten to fill up with tears. 

“Hey buddy,” Hikaru said.

“Boy are we glad to see you.” Scotty beamed at him. Nyota reached forward to Jim’s closest body part within reach, which was his ankle underneath the blanket, but her hand on his ankle seemed to carry all the same energy of a hug. Gaila kissed him on the cheek. Pavel started clapping. Scotty moved to offer Jim the flask. 

“Absolutely fucking not,” Leonard cut in, to a chorus of laughter. 

“Bones.”

The sound of Jim’s voice made Leonard forget everything else that was going on, the stupidity he was in the middle of preventing, the plate full of food on his lap. Luckily someone had the foresight to grab it before Leonard was out of his chair and kneeling down next to Jim’s bed. 

“Hey, Jim,” he said, and the tears in his eyes were more than a threat, it turned out, because his vision started to blur the longer he knelt there with Jim smiling at him like that. 

“Thanks for saving my life.”

“Anytime.”

“You’re my best friend, you know that?”

Leonard rubbed his eyes before the tears started to spill over onto his cheeks, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling at that. After a night awake spent worrying, first in the waiting room while Jim got his appendix out, and then in that stupid chair next to his bed, he felt it all fade away immediately at the sound of Jim’s voice and the sleepy grin on his face. 

And then Jim’s face turned a little bit serious, eyebrows drawing together and that little wrinkle between them coming back. 

“Bones. I have to tell you something,” Jim said, apparently forgetting that they had an audience. An audience made up of their ridiculous, nosy friends. Now that Leonard’s emotions were leveling out, he caught Christine’s blue scrubs in his peripheral vision, too. 

“Sure, Jim, what is it.”

“--and I don’t care if this is going to ruin our friendship, even though you really are the best friend I’ve ever had in my life and I’ll never have another friend like you. I need to say this.”

“Well now you’re freakin me out, darlin, spit it out.”

Jim looked absolutely terrified for a moment, his eyes wide and soft blue like his hospital gown. And then he said, 

“I’m in love with you.”

The room was completely silent again, then, for a completely different reason. It was the kind of pause that happens in a crowd before everyone figures out if what they just heard was a joke or not. The first person to break that silence was Christine. 

“He might still be loopy from the meds.”

“No, I mean it!” Jim insisted, hands balling up in the hospital blankets. He looked back at Leonard. “I mean it, and I don’t care if me saying this is going to--”

“Jim.”

“--ruin things, because I don’t think it will, I think we could be really great as--”

“ _ Jim. _ ”

“--boyfriends or even husbands because--”

“ _ JIM! _ ” everyone shouted, almost in unison. 

“You two are already married,” Nyota said plainly. Jim stared at her in shock, apparently trying to process this, and then slowly turned back to Leonard, like he needed confirmation. Or maybe not. 

“That’s impossible,” Jim whispered.

Leonard bit at his bottom lip to keep from laughing. Finally he cleared his throat and nodded. 

“It’s true.”

“It can’t be. I don’t remember that.”

“Look at your left hand, darlin.”

Jim lifted up his left hand from the bed and examined it, the gold band on his ring finger. The shock of realization was so clear it was adorable. And it also made Leonard worry about what  _ exactly _ they’d put him on after that surgery. 

“We already got married,” he said quietly.

“We did,” Leonard confirmed. “The wedding was six months ago.”

“I missed it!”

“No, you didn’t, you were there.”

“I missed our wedding, and we can only have one.”

“You were at the wedding, Jim.”

“Oh,  _ god _ .” Jim covered his face with his hands. “I can’t believe I missed it. How could I do that to you.”

“Are you  _ crying? _ ”

“I’m so sorry, Bones,” he choked out. 

“No,  _ Jim-- _ ”

-

It took more than an hour to console Jim. An hour which involved everyone holding back contagious laughter, showing Jim photo proof from his own wedding  _ which he had attended _ , swearing on lives and mothers’ lives and pinky fingers that they had witnessed Jim  _ at his own wedding _ , Christine adjusting his dosage and bringing him two chocolate pudding cups, and minutes at a time spent staring at his own ring, and Leonard’s ring, and both at once. When he finally accepted the truth, he still seemed a little bit sad. 

At that point Leonard was sitting in the bed with him, so Jim could rest his tired, overwhelmed head against his shoulder. He sighed loudly. 

“What is it, now,” Leonard asked. Their friends were still there but mostly calmed down, talking amongst themselves or on their phones, but everyone looked up again once Jim started talking. 

“I can’t believe we only get to have one wedding.”

“That’s how it works, sweetheart.”

“Can’t we do _ something? _ ”

“If we agree to do something, will you finally calm down about this?”

“I make no promises.”

“How about a friendship ceremony?” Pavel chimed in. 

“A best-friendship ceremony,” Gaila added, “to celebrate all of the best-friendship-ness of already being married.”

Nyota snorted and started cleaning up takeout boxes. 

“Can we, Bones?” Jim asked, already sounding tired enough to sleep again. 

Leonard was about to dismiss the idea, but then he looked down at Jim’s blond head against his shoulder, and thought about him nearly passed out on the bathroom floor, about him speechless from pain in the passenger’s seat on the drive to the hospital, and unconscious in the hospital bed, and smiling so easily the second he woke up, and instead he kissed the top of that head and said, 

“Sure. Anything.”


	5. bones mccoy being a dad (ft. mcspirk and baby animals)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG we're all on the struggle bus headed to god knows where
> 
> anyway @weresilver-in-space requested this lovely prompt which i finally managed to bring to life please enjoy

**Prompt (from @weresilver-in-space):** “All I need is some adorable, maybe-general-maybe-McSpirk-I’m-not-picky Bones being a dad (Chekov? Random alien kids? Joanna? All of the above? Your choice.)”

Leonard had grown accustomed to his medbay being used for a multitude of purposes other than medicine. Usually it was Jim “looking for counsel” (read: looking to talk to himself while Leonard occasionally grunted in response), or Spock stalling his routine checkup (read: loitering), or crewmembers fraternizing when they think he’s gone for the day (he’s not, and his office walls are thin). An animal shelter, though, that one was new. 

Apparently nobody could come up with a better place to bring a pregnant sehlat after saving it from a forest fire on last week’s away mission. Leonard could think of a good place: fucking  _ anywhere  _ else. He didn’t mind the mother, of course, because she was big and fluffy and so tired all the time that all she’d do was nap on the floor next to Leonard’s desk. Actually, he didn’t mind that at all, he kind of liked the energy she brought to his office, like a guard dog who couldn’t care less. 

And then she gave birth. 

To thirteen baby sehlats. 

The actual delivery process went just fine. Leonard managed to find a crewmember with veterinary experience (who was working down in Engineering, go figure), and some space heaters, and there were no other patients that day. The problem was when somebody let slip that there were baby animals in medbay. People came  _ running _ . 

When it got to the point where Leonard, even through the walls of his office, could no longer hear himself think over the noise of two dozen people fawning around a couple of sehlat cubs, he finally snapped and yelled loud enough to scare all of them out of medbay until well into their next five year mission. Even his staff spent the rest of the day walking on eggshells (and kneeling down to play with them when they thought their CMO wasn’t looking). 

When actual patients arrived a few days later after a jefferies tube mishap, though, the sehlats became a problem. Like, a hygiene one. After discussing it with Chapel and realizing that any other use of common ship space to store the cubs would have resulted in similar crowds appearing, he resigned himself to the least worst option. 

It turned out Leonard had miscalculated. Wildly. Because he’d forgotten that his instinct to take the sehlats home with him were part of a larger pattern. Something Jim had affectionately referred to as  _ taking in strays _ . 

Leonard’s quarters were already full with snoring, yelping, wrestling sehlat cubs when Spock showed up, his uniform wrinkled like it sometimes was after an evening shift in one of the science labs. He’d learned by now what tired looked like on Spock--not as obvious as it looked on humans, but nonetheless easy to spot--in the slightly unkempt nature of his hair and the way his eyes were slower to take in his surroundings and just the  _ tiniest  _ slump of the shoulders. Leonard had no choice but to kiss the curve of one of those tired shoulders when he greeted him at the door, and then pull him forward for a real kiss, and then point him to the direction of the shower. 

“Jim told me to inform you that he will be late tonight.”

“Like every other night,” Leonard called after him. He padded into the kitchen to start the hot water for tea. 

It wasn’t until about an hour later when Spock, expert of social tact that he was, brought up the elephant in the room. Or the sehlat in the room. All fourteen of them. 

“Ashayam, why do you have the sehlat mother and her litter in your quarters.”

Leonard sighed. 

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Very well.”

Spock lifted up the covers to make room for Leonard to climb into bed, and he was grateful. For as irritating he could be sometimes, at least Spock knew how to put a damn  _ pin _ in something, instead of pushing the issue like Jim inevitably would whenever he inevitably showed up.

Except Jim showed up a few hours later, quietly enough that Leonard only woke up for a few seconds as he settled into bed behind him, kissed his neck and hummed softly. Leonard hummed in response and fell asleep again, tucked between Spock, motionless but solid and warm and close, and Jim, already wrapping an arm and a leg around his body.

The topic was unavoidable in the morning, of course. Once the lights were up again it was kind of impossible to distract Jim from the giant sehlat in the corner of his living room and her 13 growing and slowly waking babies piled up around her. Even if Jim had managed to make the half-asleep walk from the bedroom to the kitchen without noticing them, though, he definitely witnessed when Leonard walked in next, with a trail of sehlat cubs behind him. 

“So, uh, Bones. Tell me why your quarters are full of sehlats.”

The expectant look on Jim’s face was rivaled only by the half dozen little sehlat faces looking up at him as they crowded around his feet. Leonard really did take in strays, didn’t he. Regardless of whether or not he wanted to, damn it. He already had Jim and Spock and an entire ship’s worth of patients to take care of. He took a break from making coffee to rub his eyes. 

“Because your circus company of a crew left me with no other choice.”

“ _ Circus company, _ ” Jim repeated quietly at Spock, who quirked his eyebrows from the doorway as some sort of a shrug equivalent and moved to join Jim at the table. “Circus company,” he said again, louder. “Spock, would you say that  _ circus company  _ is an accurate way to describe our crew?”

The hiss of the coffee machine interrupted Spock’s very thoughtful pause. 

“I would call it an exaggeration, but one well within the realm of Leonard’s vocabulary.”

Whatever Jim said in response to that, which was probably just making fun of him, Leonard drowned out. It was first thing in the morning and he had to devote all of his fine motor skills to pouring coffee out of the pot and into mugs. He nearly spilled it on the second cup when a sehlat cub jumped up against his leg, its tiny paws scuffing at his calf. 

“And what do  _ you  _ want,” Leonard said under his breath, looking down at the fluff of brown fur against his leg. Another one of them yelped at him. 

“Hey, coffee is for humans.” 

Another yelp.

“Yeah, I know it smells good. But if you’re hungry you gotta go find your mama.”

Leonard picked up the two mugs for himself and Jim and tried to step away from the counter, only to drag one sehlat along with him and be followed by five others, softly purring and staring up at him.

“Go on, get,” he said gently, pushing the crowd towards the living room with one socked foot. “Get outta here.” 

All of them scurried out of the doorway and back to their mother, all except for the one attached to Leonard’s leg. He looked down at the cub again, clinging to his leg with thankfully undeveloped claws, and sighed. 

“You can stay, squirt.” 

And then Leonard looked up, halfway between the counter and the table with coffee mugs in hand, and saw Jim and Spock staring at him with equally wide eyes. Jim was grinning, making that same face he always made in the Academy when he’d stumbled upon blackmail material, but Spock--Spock was  _ blushing _ . 

It was too damn early for this. 


	6. mcspirk: spock in an apron (this is not a drill!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i'm not dead--and neither is this fic!

**Prompt from @sparkly-angell on tumblr:** “what do you think of Spock cooking homemade old Earth recipes for his boyfriends (Kirk and Bones) because they’ve been missing their homes a lot recently (illogical, but Spock wants to cheer them up).”

Spock in an apron. 

Nyota has to take a second just to let that reality sink in, and then another second to commit it to memory: Spock is standing in her kitchen, spoon in hand, wearing her purple apron. Somehow when she agreed to let Spock use her kitchen and baking supplies, this isn’t what she imagined. 

“Nyota?”

“Hmm?” She has to snap herself out of it. Judging from the look on his face, eyes a little bit wide and head tilted forward, he must have asked her a question while she was standing there in shock. 

The Spock she had dated was a very, very different Spock, but that was also a Spock from a long time ago, before the Enterprise, before their five year mission, and (maybe more importantly) before Jim and Leonard. 

Although he for some reason refuses to admit that his sudden need to use Nyota’s kitchen in her quarters, because his kitchen is  _ ill-equipped for traditional terran baking _ , because the replicators are  _ unfamiliar with the specific terran dessert he intends to prepare _ , is all because of a conversation between Jim, Leonard, and Spock (which Nyota overheard) about which kind of foods they miss the most that the replicators aren’t programmed for. 

Apparently Spock decided that baking lemon bars from scratch was easier than just programming the replicator to make lemon bars. 

“Did you ask me something?”

“Only your opinion on terminology. Jim and Leonard were unable to find common ground yesterday.”

“Oh. Lemon bars, definitely.”

“You agree with Jim?”

“Yes, although…” Nyota gestures her index finger against her lips, whispering, “don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Spock only raises his eyebrows at that, but Nyota can read the warmth in his expression after years of practice. 

“Need any help?”

“No, the recipe is quite straightforward,” Spock says, “Thank you.”

Nyota smiles, and watches him go back to work. She finds herself unable to properly distract herself for the rest of the afternoon, when the scene in her kitchen feels so out of the ordinary. Spock pressing down shortbread dough with his knuckles, whipping lemon custard, reading every step of the recipe on his PADD with a close, determined gaze, as if it were some sacred document. 

Watching him deliver these lemon bars--to the two men he refuses to admit he’s been courting for the past six months--will definitely be a sight to behold, but this feels like an extra special secret. Not even Jim and Leonard would get to see his careful, attentive baking, with a purple apron tied very neatly and logically in a bow around his waist. 

-

She turns out to be mistaken, though, because the lemon bar delivery definitely tops the lemon bar baking. 

Spock walks slower than usual on his way to the rec room, maybe because of the plate of lemon bars in his hands, covered neatly with a tea towel, or maybe because he’s nervous--because he’s been courting Jim and Leonard for six months and refuses to admit it. Nyota just follows him, trying not to laugh at how ridiculous it all is. 

“Spock!” Jim grins and waves as soon as the doors swish open, and if Spock is courting him with gestures like this, Jim crossed that line a long, long time ago. He’s been courting Spock for  _ at least _ the last three years. 

Leonard is decidedly harder to read, but Nyota can’t miss the way he scoots his chair to the side, closer to Jim, but making enough room for Spock--even though the other side of the table is completely unoccupied. She smiles at Spock before going to sit next to Gaila and watch the three of them tirelessly pretend not to have the hots for each other. 

“Hello Jim, Leonard.” He sits down next to Leonard, setting the plate on the table between them. 

“What is that,” Leonard asks. 

“I conducted some research into terran desserts after our conversation yesterday,” Spock says nonchalantly, and removes the towel from on top of the lemon bars.

“Holy shit.”

“Spock, where did you get these?” Jim asks, looking like he’s about to fall out of his own seat. He reached forward and then stops, hand hovering over the plate, looks back up at Spock. “Can I?”

“Yes.” The corner of Spock’s mouth quirks up. “They are for both of you. I prepared them.”

“You  _ made  _ lemon squares,” Leonard says in disbelief, although he’s leaning closer himself. Jim snorts. 

“Lemon squares? What are lemon squares?” Jim pipes up. “I don’t know what lemon squares are.”

“Oh shut up.” Leonard pushes Jim’s hand away from the plate to take the lemon bar off the top. The first bite seems to render him speechless, and the lines of his face start to soften, and if he hadn’t closed his eyes already they’d probably be rolling back in his head. As they should, Nyota thinks, because she tried one earlier, and it was life-changing, and not just because she hadn’t had a lemon bar since she started living on the Enterprise. 

“Holy shit,” Leonard says again, quietly. 

Jim dives forward to take one and nearly swallows it whole. He groans, falls back against his seat, and covers his face with his hands while he finishes chewing. And then he says, 

“Spock.”

“Are they acceptable?”

“You’re the best person I’ve ever met.”

Spock says nothing, but his cheeks and the tips of his ears start to turn green. 

“I mean it.” Jim drops his hands from his face. “I would die for you. I would  _ kill _ for you. I--”

Jim just keeps going. 

“Do you think those three are ever gonna get together?” Gaila whispers in Nyota’s ear, and Nyota breathes out a laugh. 

“You know if they do, they’ll probably stop flirting in front of everybody,” she whispers back.

“Oh, fuck. Good point.”


	7. a post-tarsus hurt comfort (chris pike strikes again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so my beloved @redford who never takes a day off from leaving lovely comments on my works asked for an academy-era hurt/comfort with chris, jim, and tarsus. naturally i had to deliver. unfortunately it took way longer than intended
> 
> thank you so much for the request, redford, i hope i did it justice!

“What’s happening to you is that you’re processing,” Jim’s counselor, Lilana, said simply. Her voice was on the better side of  _ soothing _ and narrowly missed  _ condescending _ most of the time, so it usually didn’t make Jim want to blow his brains out to hear her talk about feelings and coping and all that shit. Today, unfortunately, was not one of those days.

“Processing,” he repeated. 

“It’s been about two months since you started counseling, and only a few weeks since you really began to open up during these sessions. This is a normal stage in the healing process, for everything to hurt more than it used to. You’re finally realizing how much you carry this trauma around every day, and that sort of realization comes with grief. It’s normal.”

Jim huffed out a laugh which sounded way more pathetic than he meant it to, but what could he do, really. He was  _ processing _ , after all. Lilana’s face didn’t change. 

“So.” He paused, slouching a little further into his chair, looking around Lilana’s office, packed with non-controversial knick knacks and diplomas on the wall. He focused his attention on her PhD in grief counseling when he said, “Part of my healing process is to feel worse, then, huh.”

She didn’t take the bait, only waited for Jim’s eyes to find their way back around the room and to her careful expression. Once he was looking at her again Lilana leaned forward a little. 

“You went through a serious trauma at a critical age.”

“Right.”

“From what you’ve told me, you never grieved properly back then.”

“I watched 4 thousand people get executed for no reason when I was thirteen and then afterwards they sent me back to live in my stepdad’s house, I  _ really  _ don’t think you should have expected me to--”

“I never expressed an expectation,” Lilana interrupted, which she rarely ever did. She held up her hand. “The fact is that you didn’t grieve then, which means you need to grieve now. This is not something you can ‘skip over’.”

“So what am I supposed to do, just be an emotional wreck until I can’t anymore?”

“Pretty much.”

It must have shown on Jim’s face how much he hated that answer. He was fed up already after just four days of feeling raw and sensitive and like he was going to fall apart at any second. He’d run out of two classes hyperventilating. He’d choked back tears at Gaila jokingly asking if he was having a bad day just because he was quiet during lunch. He didn’t want to just  _ do this until he couldn’t anymore _ . That was unacceptable. It was unacceptable because, in his current state, he couldn’t realistically imagine it _ not  _ hurting anymore. 

“What came up just now?”

“I just…” Jim wrapped his arms around himself, unknowingly trying to hold himself together when he forced out the words, “I don’t think it’ll ever stop. If I let myself feel like this. I don’t think I’ll stop.”

Lilana didn’t wait for him to make eye contact again. 

“It will end, Jim. I promise it will.”

“How would you know,” Jim spat out, the words shaking. “I’m the only survivor who’s on Earth right now. For all we know nobody else is over it, either.”

Once again, she didn’t take the bait. Two months of counseling and this woman never indulged Jim in his self-pity parties. He’d been sure, before, that that was what people paid therapists to do. 

“You’re the only person around here who survived living in the colony when it happened, but you’re not the only person who was involved. There are people who understand what you saw, even if they don’t understand what you feel.” 

Jim sighed, looking to the side again to keep the tears in his eyes. People were supposed to cry in therapy, but he’d been crying so much lately that he was trying as hard as he could to hold them back out of sheer spite more than anything. 

“Our time is almost up, if you want to just sit here for a few minutes.”

“I really don’t.”

“Then I’ll see you next week.” Lilana stood up, smoothing down her dark gray faculty uniform. Jim nodded, still looking away, and got out of that office as fast as his feet would go. 

-

His next three counseling sessions were all just slight variations on that same conversation. Jim wasn’t getting any better. In fact, he was getting worse, because on top of being emotional and pathetic all the _ fucking  _ time, he was starting to get angry at himself over it, too. His counselor, of course, did not approve. 

Jim ignored all the advice she gave, which was all the same, anyway, and all meaningless to him.  _ Let yourself feel your feelings. Let your friends support you even if you don’t tell them details. Talk to someone who was there. Educate yourself more about what happened to combat your vivid memories of it.  _

_ Educate yourself _ . That one almost made Jim angry. The reason he was even in counseling was because of that stupid Federation History seminar for first years which lumped Governor Kodos into a discussion on controversial Starfleet Leaders.  _ Controversial _ , was the word used. As if murdering four thousand people was worthy of moral debate. 

But Jim sat through the whole seminar and it kicked off a major depressive episode which lasted about 48 hours and would have been longer if Chris hadn’t intervened. 

To this day he wasn’t sure how he even found out. He really hadn’t wanted Chris to find out. 

“Do you tell Pike what I say in here?” he asked, unsure if he was interrupting or if they’d been sitting in silence this whole time. 

“Of course not,” Lilana answered. “Everything you say is confidential.”

“How’s he supposed to know when to stop worrying about me, then.”

“Do you think he should stop worrying about you?”

Jim crossed his arms over his chest. 

-

Chris had overridden the code to Jim’s dorm room, back then, to find Jim completely strung out, eyes red and wide as he tried and tried to read for his midterm the next morning, brain unable to even hold onto a single word, his entire body shaking. Jim didn’t really remember how long he’d been sitting like that, only that he’d missed a class already by then and ignored his roommate’s attempt to ask if he was alright. And he didn’t really remember what happened next, just that he never took that midterm, and he spent a couple days in a private room in the clinic where he remembered seeing Chris more times than an actual doctor. And then he was waking up in his dorm room again, and he knew he had a counseling appointment that day, and he wasn’t sure how he knew. 

Jim still felt ashamed about it. He and Lilana hadn’t even covered that part yet, they were still busy unpacking all the stuff that happened  _ before _ the Federation History seminar. But he hated himself for all the things he could remember. For Chris seeing him like that, just because of one stupid freshman seminar, after he was the one who’d insisted on Jim joining Starfleet to begin with. He hated himself for missing his midterm. 

He almost wished Lilana would tell Chris what was going on in their sessions, so he could avoid having to talk to Chris about it himself, but the truth was that Jim wasn’t getting any better anyway, and that part he was happy to keep confidential. 

“I’ll see you next week,” Lilana said, closing her notebook, somehow sounding content with where things were. Jim sighed and got up from the chair and resigned himself to another week of nothing changing. 

-

Wrong. He was fucking wrong. 

Things did change that week. Rapidly and for the worse. 

It wasn’t even a history course this time. It was in his elective course for this semester, an upper-level ethics seminar which he’d applied for even though first year students weren’t usually allowed. Exploration Without Imperialism. He’d enjoyed it up to this point. 

Talking about Tarsus wasn’t even in the syllabus. 

Jim excused himself this time, before he had to listen to any of his classmates philosophize over one of the darkest points in Federation history, something that only happened a decade ago. He picked up his PADD and left the room, nearly ran through the hallway until he was sure he wouldn’t hear anything more, and by the time he was on the steps of the building his heart was pounding too hard to hear anything at all. He could feel the beginning of what he felt last time, three months ago. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was supposed to be better now. 

He kept walking, and he thought he was walking to his dorm, but he never saw the outside of his building. He crossed the entire campus to the sound of his own heartbeat, and he didn’t know where he was going anymore. 

He only knew what he felt, and what everything made him feel. The sound of traffic, of voices, of shop doors opening and closing and those bells in the doorway. Every sound made him more afraid, like it all signalled danger. Two friends talking in the street, a dog barking, a car horn. He had to get away from all of it. By the time he did, he was exhausted, surrounded by trees in one of the city parks, and the sun was starting to get low in the sky. 

Jim still felt afraid. 

He found a park bench. He found his comm in his pocket. He found Chris’ contact and sent him a message, the only thing he could think to write, something true and bearable to watch himself type. 

_ I don’t know where I am. _

After the first time this happened, it came as no surprise when Chris found him, still sitting there, hands digging into his own thighs. Chris’ footsteps on the trail pulled Jim out of the sound of his own shaky, panicked breath. 

“Need a ride?” he asked, tone completely casual and almost amused, as if he thought Jim was drunk or something, and then Jim looked up, and his face shifted in a second from lighthearted to serious. Concerned. Maybe even a little afraid, too. 

He was sitting next to him on the bench in a second, hand firmly pressed against Jim’s upper back. 

“Hey. Just breathe,” he said, and Jim tried. 

Once he managed to breathe in and out without his body shaking and his chest tightening in pain he dropped his head into his hands, pressing against his eyelids with his palms. Exhaustion was already washing over him, just like that, replacing the panic that had been overwhelming him since he walked out of the seminar. It had probably been hours since then. A few breaths after that, he found the words to say, 

“I’m sorry.”

“For what,” Chris asked. 

“I don’t know.” Jim felt like his next exhale was forced out of him, and his next inhale was desperate. “I’m not good at this. I shouldn’t be here.”

“Your grades are in the top 15th percentile. I mean, you piss off a lot of professors, but your work is good.”

Jim scrubbed his hands over his face, opened his eyes and stared down at the dirt. 

“I can do flight sims and quantum physics,” he said to his shoes, “but I can’t talk about Federation history like it’s just some story in a textbook.”

“You mean you can’t talk about Tarsus.”

“Captains are supposed to be able to think objectively about tragedy. I can’t do that. I don’t--” Jim choked a little, and caught himself again, “I don’t want to do that.”

Chris placed his hand over the back of Jim’s neck, lightly, but the sensation almost made Jim want to sit up straight again.

“You don’t have to do that.”

-

The gesture immediately transported Jim back nine years in his memory. Not to the actual source of his trauma, but to a moment he’d repressed anyway, hidden in the forgotten weeks of aftermath where he bunked in the lower decks of a starship with two ensigns and skipped mealtimes in favor of hiding in unused maintenance closets. 

But this must have been right after he was beamed up, sitting on that ship for the first time. His entire body ached for some unknown reason--maybe he’d fought someone? One of Kodos’ guards?--the taste of blood was still faint in his mouth, or maybe he’d been throwing up. It was all muddled together, but there was that hand on the back of his neck, and Christopher Pike, only a few years into being a Captain at that point, sitting next to him. It was the Enterprise, that ship he’d lived on for those miserable weeks. The same one he dreamed about captaining now.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Chris had said, the sound of his voice distant and clouded in Jim’s memory. “The Federation already agreed to indict everyone involved. The only thing that came from that fight was you getting a concussion.”

So he’d been in a fight  _ and _ he’d thrown up. Jim remembered his head pounding. He hadn’t let them take him to the ship’s medbay. For some reason Chris hadn’t forced the issue, and let him keep his concussion and scrapes and bruises. 

“You need to learn to control your anger.”

The memory was vivid and sickening and gone as soon as it came, and Jim was back on that park bench. 

-

“I need to learn to control my anger,” Jim repeated, as if he and Chris had revisited that memory in unison. But they hadn’t.

“I don’t think you know what that means.”

“Well clearly I don’t know how to control any of my emotions.”

“Controlling your anger doesn’t mean getting rid of it. It just means you don’t let it consume you. You can still listen to it. Hell, you can express it too. That’s what I just did with your ethics professor.”

“Ugh.”

Jim covered his face with his hands again. He really didn’t want to know that. How many people knew about his _ issues _ now, he wondered. They were probably betting on how long it would take before Jim dropped out of the Academy. Like a shooting star. Destined to crash and burn and leave nothing behind but the memory of smoke and maybe a burn mark on the ground beneath everyone else’s feet. 

“You don’t have to make them change the lessons. People should talk about it. I should be able to talk about it. I can’t even do  _ that  _ anymore.”

“Could you ever talk about it?”

Jim thought about that question for a second, and then he realized, 

“No, I guess not.”

“You’ll get there. It takes time. And a lot of bad days.”

Jim hissed out a sigh. 

“Great.”

“The most important thing is for you to find people to stick with you through those days, because that’ll help you realize that you’re not alone. You already have me, because I pulled you out of there ten years ago to begin with, so on principle you can’t get rid of me. And you have Lilana.”

“Lilana has no choice but to stick with me.”

“Doesn’t make a difference. You wouldn’t even be having this conversation with me if not for all the conversations you’ve had with her.”

Jim wanted to argue with that, but Chris was probably right. Without those grueling counseling sessions, another seminar about Tarsus would have ended with him in the same place as the first one did. He actually _ sought Chris out  _ today, and it made him get better. 

“So that’s two people.”

“There will be more.”

Jim sat up, finally, shedding Chris’ hand from his back. He felt himself glaring at the trees around him, the trail, a patch of weeds, and realized why he was glaring, why he was angry. 

“I just--I can’t stand feeling everyone’s eyes on me when it comes up. Knowing how much everyone wants to ask about it when they find out I was there. Being the only one who was there. I can’t stand people knowing I was there,” he said to the weeds, “I feel like they look at me and they--they wonder why I deserved to make it out of Tarsus alive, what’s so special about me, shit like that.”

“Why do you worry that they’re thinking that?”

“Because--” Jim started, and the answer hit him for the first time, and he said it before he realized how pathetic he sounded, “--because I didn’t deserve to make it out alive,” he said, voice getting quiet by the end. “Not any more than anyone else. There’s nothing special about me. Those people that were executed, any of them could have ended up where I am. Some of them probably would be doing better.”

Jim expected that sort of confession to horrify Chris, maybe even make him call Lilana, or the head of Cadet Services, or, like, his mom. Instead Chris just sat there for a moment, and finally said, 

“You can’t think about it like that.”

Jim looked over at Chris, who seemed completely un-horrified, actually. He just looked thoughtful, underneath the dim park lights. Jim realized, then, that it had gotten dark. But Chris was just sitting there in the dark with him, talking about Tarsus not like it was a philosophical question, or a history lesson, but just like it was. Like something shitty that happened to them both. He was pretty sure he was starting to understand what Lilana meant weeks ago. 

“You’re trying to make sense of it,” Chris finally said, “there is no sense. There was nothing rational, or moral, or logical. There was no deserve.”

The last sentence seemed to reach forward and pull Jim’s heart out of his chest, leaving it raw and exposed in the night air between them. It hurt, almost, but Jim couldn’t stop listening. Chris’ next words all almost-hurt in the same way, but he couldn’t stop listening. 

“It makes you feel better to think that what happened on Tarsus happened for a reason, and what happened to you happened for a reason, but it didn’t. It happened because the Governor did something unthinkable. And people died, and people didn’t die, and it had nothing to do with who those people were. That’s how you have to think about it.”

“Is that how you think about it?”

“Yes,” Chris replied. His eyes were a little bit wide, like this conversation was something fragile he had to hold and protect. 

“You didn’t deserve to live any more than those four thousand people deserved to die. But both of those things happened, and you’ll waste the rest of your life if you try to make any more sense of it than that.”

Neither of them said anything for a long time, until the sky got even darker, and moths circled around the lights above them, and Jim started to shiver. Chris didn’t mention anything about them leaving the bench, or getting back to campus, he just sat there, almost like he needed the silence as much as Jim did, tonight.

Finally, when his heart was back inside his chest and Jim couldn’t feel anything except exhausted and hungry and cold, he turned to Chris and asked, 

“Can you drive me back to the dorm?”

Chris smiled, somehow.

“You bet. I’m gonna get some dinner in you first, though.”

-

“Jim, I’m really proud of you.”

“Yeah I know.”

“Don’t shrug that off. This is a big deal.”

“Does it mean I’m actually getting better for once?”

Lilana smiled a bit in the way she did when Jim said something absolutely self deprecating and non-constructive, a smile that was halfway towards cringing. But she said, 

“It does.”

_ End.  _


End file.
